The burial of gospel singer Olayemi Bayonile Bolaji, better known as Toluwanisings, holds in Ibadan on Monday, closing weeks of a public family quarrel over where and how the 41-year-old worship minister should be laid to rest. A funeral programme posted on his official Instagram page lists a lying-in-state from 9am to 10am, followed by a burial service from 10am to 11am at the Banjola Event and Conference Centre on Hope Road, Alakia. The notice, carrying the words “Forever in our Hearts, always in our Lives,” did not say where the interment would take place.
The finality of Monday’s service stands in sharp contrast to the confusion that followed the singer’s death. Bolaji, who led the Toluwani Gospel Music Ministry and was known for his energetic, Yoruba-rooted praise songs, died in the early hours of 14 October 2026 after reportedly slumping at his Ibadan residence. He had performed only hours earlier at a worship concert in the city, and his sudden passing, barely three weeks after he marked his fifth wedding anniversary, stunned the gospel music community.
What turned grief into controversy was the account of his final hours. His personal assistant, Babadunni Gbolabo, said the singer was rushed from one hospital to another, as many as seven or eight, in a desperate search for care, but that the efforts failed. The claim that facilities turned him away drew public anger, though the University College Hospital, Ibadan, said it had no record of him being brought in. His family has not disclosed a medical cause of death, and none has been established publicly.
The burial itself became a second source of conflict. The singer’s father, Muniru Adekunle Olayemi, favoured burying his son at the house the musician built, or beside his late mother in Osun State, while the widow, Elizabeth Damilola Olayemi, was said to oppose a home burial. Sections of the paternal family went further, calling for the burial to be postponed until the circumstances of the death were investigated, and at one point warning that they could exhume the body if he were buried in a cemetery rather than at the family home. A lawyer weighed in publicly, citing the Criminal Code to argue that interring a body within a residential property without due process could carry legal consequences.
With the exchanges spreading across social media and hardening into open accusation, the Oyo State Police Command stepped in. Its spokesperson, Olayinka Ayanlade, said the Commissioner of Police, Abimbola Olugbenga, acted on information received on 28 October about the disagreement and invited the parties to the command headquarters at Eleyele. The police described the move as a preventive one, meant to keep the peace rather than to decide who was right.
That intervention produced a written settlement. On 3 November, the widow, the father, and friends and associates of the singer signed a peace undertaking before the commissioner, pledging to halt public exchanges, interviews and social media posts about the dispute. The agreement effectively cleared the path to Monday’s service and signalled that, at least for the funeral, the warring sides had agreed to stand down.
Beyond the personal tragedy, the episode touched nerves that run deeper in Nigerian public life. Disputes over the burial of prominent figures are not new, and they often expose tensions between a spouse and an extended family over custom, property and the right to decide. The more troubling thread is the question of emergency care. Allegations that a collapsing man could be moved between several hospitals without being stabilised speak to long-standing complaints that some facilities hesitate to treat patients in crisis, an issue that reaches well beyond one celebrated name.
Amid the dispute, there were also gestures of support. The singer’s two daughters received scholarship offers, and his father was offered new accommodation after public concern over the family’s circumstances. Those interventions did little, however, to resolve the central questions his death raised.
As the grave is readied, the louder arguments have quietened, but the unanswered ones remain. The cause of Bolaji’s death is still officially unknown, and the calls from within his own family for an investigation have not been formally addressed. Monday’s service brings the mourning to a close in public view, even as those closest to him are left to carry the questions it could not settle.